Ferber?

My Fiance and I went out last night. Now that I'm so huge and baby is so close everybody has advice! One of his good friends had this to say. "One piece of advice: Don't wake the baby! Let him sleep as much as he wants, or you'll pay for it later! We had to use the Ferber method on Mina when she was 6 months to make her sleep through the night. All because we would wake her when guests wanted to see her!" He told us all about how they would let her scream it out and how he would be in tears and it was so awful. But then he had a big grin when he said it finally worked! My hackles were raised the whole time he was talking. I haven't done much research on parenting methods, Ferber or otherwise. I just do what feels natural, and my body and soul tell me a helpless baby needs to be held and soothed and loved, not shuffled off to a distant nursery and left to scream! He was a bit surprised to hear we aren't even setting up a formal "nursery" until we buy our house a year from now and that baby Jim will room with us until then. To us, this is perfectly reasonable. We have a limited amount of space and Jim is an infant who needs mama and daddy. Why waste all that money and space on a frou frou nursery that will need to be changed once he gets out of his crib? Bleh. Thanks for letting me vent!
Jazz

 

You are absolutely right on with your thinking! Sounds like you are going to be a GREAT mama! I practice attachment parenting which means listening to your heart instead of "methods"


Oh, and my baby is still in bead with us and she is 17 months old! And my 3 year old climbs in, in the middle of the night~

 

Totally agree with you

About the only bit of sense in there is don't wake the baby. The rest is such bullshit.
My parents used crying it out on me, still pissed with them about it (some 18 years later). Used to hit me too. Never did with my brother though, because he was 'a good baby'. Then they wonder why he likes them more.

 

Ugh.....I can't imagine letting a tiny baby (or anyone for that matter) just lay there and cry!!!
Would he let his wife/girlfriend lay there and cry? Would he let his mother lay there and cry? Would he let his best friend lay there and cry?
Probably not. He would go to give comfort. Why should that be any different for a baby??????

Sorry for my rant......that way of thinking just really pisses me off!

I didn't have a baby to let her lay there and cry!!!!

Okay....I'm done....

 

F*&% Feber! People are always trying to tell us how to raise our kids! YOu know what, as mothers, we instinctivly know what's best for our children. Follow the primal, animal instinct that's deep inside you. That's where I get my real answers from.

We have a crib that hasn't been used since Sasha was 4 months old. She wanted to sleep in her crib, and would get mad if she was in bed with us, at first. Now she HAS to be in bed with us. We're visiting mormor (Swedish for grandma) in Reno. A few times we've snuck out of bed and tried to head down the street to chill out with old friends. Moms calls me at 1130pm and Sash won't be put down. She has to be held. As long as mormor is holding her, she'll sleep. So we come home and back to bed. One day she'll be grown and we'll miss these sweet, cuddly times.

 

Like Maggie says: "I wouldn't 'Ferberize' a dog!"

i love that

 

Hehe, my parents tried that method on me when I was a baby and when I had stopped crying, my mom was walking down the hall and she heard knocking coming from inside the nursery door and when she opened it, there I was. I learned how to climb out of my crib. I think this method might be kind of dangerous for that aspect, upset babies shouldn't be left alone because they could do something that might hurt themselves.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, that was the day they took my crib down and let me have a little bed of my own. Granted, I barely used it. I slept in a bed with my parents a lot as a kid and when my mom got pregnant with my brother, they were afraid to let me sleep in bed with them anymore (I kicked in my sleep and they didn't want to take any risks), they let me build my own little nest in their closet. All of this "advice" that says that will screw up a kid in some way or another is stupid, stuff like that is just stages that kids go through. I think the best advice someone can take about being a mother is from themselves and their own hearts and instinct. But don't shut people out completely, they may have some helpful ideas.

Congratulations on your soon-to-be addition to your family!

 

Trust your instincts, as several others have said!! Babies need to be held and loved and secure in the knowledge of your presence, even at night!!!!

I have raised 7 children without a crib. Imagine that! *smile* When my daughter got married she said "honey we need to buy a king size bed!" She knew that eventually they would have little ones in bed, and sure enough, they have 2 little ones sleeping with them most nights!

Even if you don't think you will want your toddlers sleeping with you, at least keep them in bed with you while they are little babies and need to nurse at night. Making a baby cry himself/herself to sleep is just so sad!

 

that is so cold and sad! no wonder there are so many people in the world who have distanced themselves from other humans and who can't express their love for others effectively. i think every baby cries and needs to know they can trust another for comfort and solace. it teaches them that they can fall in love with another human being later on in life. moms and dads are there to nurture babies, not ignore them i hate that certain people think this "tough love" will actually help! i will never do that to my future children...when i was little, i went through a phase of always wanting to sleep in bed with my parents. their bed wasn't exactly huge and i was a covers-hog, and so we came to a comprimise...couch cushions, pillows, blankets, and stuffed animals in their room became a bed for me. it was comfy and i got to be close to my parents and got the security of them being close by. when you're a kid, you need to feel secure or you're going to end up being a paranoid nutjob as an adult...

 

Like Michelle said. I wouldn't Feberize a dog. Much less a human infant. Mama, listen to your baby, not some jerk with an anticuddle agenda like Ferber.

 

I don't know what my parents did for me when I was little. I don't think they really followed any particular parenting style. They just kind of did what their parents did, eliminating the things that they strongly disagreed with and adding on things their parents didn't do but they felt should have. Which is what I suspect most people do, and is probably what I'll do.

I don't remember ever being left to cry. I mean, if I was being bad, I was sent to my room, and then I'd cry. But if I were upset about something, they wouldn't just ignore that.

 

My mom must have never let me "cry it out" because when my oldest was a baby, and we lived with her, i didn't know any better and i tried it a couple of times with him (i was just sooo tired, and couldn't think of anything else to do, and YES i still feel bad about it!). She snuck upstairs, and held him and sang to him until *I* fell asleep, lmao. It seems so horrible, i mean, i abandoned my baby! BUT it also taught him a valuable lesson--when mama isn't there for you, you can still count on your Nana! He knew it too, because he's always been more attached to her than me!

 

I am not condoning this, but you were an older child. "Ferberizing" is mainly used on little babies who haven't misbehaved, just aren't sleeping according to someone's preconceived, uneducated desires.

I was left to cry as an infant. When I get snarky, now you know why.

 

My in-laws tried to get me to do that. I lived at their house at the time and they were relentless and I just felt so much pressure. It was so awful. These same people were freaked out and disgusted by breast feeding. Well, I just didn't have it in me to go through with it. I couldn't let the baby cry. My kids are a ferberizer's nightmare. They were only happy in my arms. I tried that method for about 20 minutes altogether.


As for the breast feeding, I told them that me and the baby didn't think of it as sex. They were the only people who couldn't stop thinking about sex when they saw this. They're Christians and I asked them why they think God made me lactate if He didn't want the baby to nurse.

Their kids are very unhappy adults.

As I have mentioned in other threads, these are the same folks who gave me a book about why and how to beat your kids.

Everyone under the sun wants to give new parents advice. It's really annoying, but the best way that I have found to deal with it is to nod and smile and act like it's the most useful, fascinating piece of information you've ever heard, and then ignore it. *that's my advice*

 

It's a little OT, but this topic made me think of something I saw the other day. My mom and I were in her car and a confused looking guy with a sweatshirt that said 'HOOTERS' on it stumbled into the street in front of her car. I read his shirt out loud and jokingly said "Speed up."


My mom said, "Poor guy. He was probably bottlefed and now that's all he can think about."

 

ROTFLMAO!!!! I tell my dh that's why he's so obsessed with boobies. (He wasn't nursed either, but that was par for the course in the late 50s and most of the 60s, unless you were a hippy, which my MIL was NOT!)

 

My youngest brother is the only one of us 4 who was not breastfed (due to the reason that he was extremely lactose intolerant) And he was obsessed of boobies as a kid... man. It was embarrasing .....

 

I have a very busty aunt. We used to have family outings and she would pick up my little cousin (not her son) and carry him around. He would snuggle into her and very surrepticiously begin to fondle her breasts! He'd just stroke them and squeeze them and pat them, whilst sucking his thumb. Eventually she'd notice and put the kibosh on it. It took her months to get him to quit altogether! He was only 3 or 4. And yes, he was a bottlefed baby.

 

Lol